Kane & Lynch 2 is a game about violence. Well, maybe.

Violence has been portrayed in many different ways in videogames. There's been over-the-top violence, mild violence, cartoonish violence, gorey violence, and even missing it entirely as a form of protest.
But this game portrays is it a very unique and, I find, realistic way: it's dry. It's very, very dry.
With gunfights happening in the middle of urban china, killing civilians is hard to avoid. When the stakes start getting higher, dogs become an obstacle that you must kill to prevent a game over. Hell, the events of the game are kickstarted by the violent death of an innocent.
All of these are met with silence. There is no mulling over death, no celebrating victories, nothing.

I find this reaction to violence the most interesting part of the game. I found it very raw and realistic. I remembered Hotline Miami, a game that also deals with the theme of violence, but a stark difference is that in that game the protagonist vomits after the first level. In K&L2, there's never something like that. Violence is not met with indifference but a feeling of emptiness (or at least that's my take-away), maybe even conformity?

But something about this game irks me. Despite my previous "praise", I still find myself a little in the middle of the road with it.
Most of this portrayal of violence isn't really explored by the game itself, which makes me feel that I'm just being pretentious writing this. It also stops doing much interesting stuff after a character dies, and from that point on is very "eh" and then it quite literally just ends. Also this might be consequence of not playing the first game but Kane is kind of a dumbass? He does nothing but follow Lynch along without much conflict aside from saying "this sucks!", which annoyed me because he was really just there for the ride. Lynch was much more interesting, but I was hoping for their dynamic to have more meat to it other than indifference.

So that leaves me a little confused. Is the game really about violence? Is it just a violent game? Was it going for something more than that? I don't know! And frankly, I think the game is a little confused too considering the last stretch of the game.
And for that reason, I feel a little lost. I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it as a whole package. And honestly? That's fine! It did enough by presenting a different approach to violence, and that is enough to earn praise.
If Kane & Lynch 3: Escape from Brazil ever comes out (which it won't because the devs lost the rights to it when separating from SE), I'll be keeping an eye out for it. But for now, the only thing I'm sure of about this game is that it made me go 🤔